New Uses for Your Flatiron! Video

Hi, I'm Ning Chao, senior beauty editor at Marie Claire. Today, we're at Lorraine Color Bar in Santa Monica, California. I'm gonna interview Christine Chung. Christine is actually gonna show us how to get curls and volume and even do an updo with one simple flat iron. Let's check it out.

So many women own a flat iron and they really think that it just serves as one purpose--straightening the hair and you can actually create so many looks with a straightening iron.

So here we have a 90s kind of look, a very straight and very flat to the head, not much volume. But if you wanted to do something sexier, what can you do?

Well, Ning, it's all about the technique. What I like to do is grab a 2- to 3-inch section right at the root. Simply clamp, lift, don't go downward, and bend and we create this nice--

Oh, wow--

Volume. Where you choose to create the volume is where you're gonna get it. Make sure that you get beveled or rounded edges. This allows you to get really close into the root. I like to use a really flexible hold hairspray, just kinda grab sections, spray it right at the root. We went from smooth, sleek, straight to this wonderful va-va volume. Now what I'm gonna do is grab a 2- to 3-inch section. I'm going to clamp my iron, wrap the hair around the iron once, rotate it just a little bit, and bring it down quickly. Barely let that heat distribute long hair and we've got this really fun, used wave. You kinda just, you know, go in there with your fingertips, you may have to pull a little bit. We already created our volume and now we're creating the texture to go along with it, so with the same hair straightener, we went from all-over sexy volume to now beachy, tussled waves. The last step that I'm gonna show you is a more defined glamorous curl. You wanna position your hair straightener to be perpendicular to the head. Typically, with curling irons, you tend to be down here and roll all the way up. We always start on top. In this case, let's just use the white side as our beginning point. You're gonna clamp the iron, wrap your hair under and over, and rotate it 360 degrees meaning that white side is gonna appear up again, then you should begin that rotation on top. There's no downtime. You just bring it all the way straight down and, voila, this beautiful, defined curl.